Chapter 4 Three Years of Travel Luo Fan wanted to identify the origins of those writings, but he was unable. His experience was too superficial, so he excused it as a unique feature of the Great Antiquity World.
Content with this explanation, he looked around the burrow.
Every bit of chaos vitality was gone. This place had become even more desolate, brightened only by the nearby plants.
Quickly, Luo Fan"s mind shifted from the scenery. He needed to practice the nameless secret art. This method was profound and difficult to understand. But he could grasp the mystery it contained. The previous thousand years of comprehension had helped him in this regard.
He began reading and soon, mysterious energies started to well out of his Mud Pill Palace (泥丸宫) and flow through him.
In time, his body came to resemble a black hole. He was absorbing innumerable amounts of innate vitality and it didn"t take long for that eddy current to spread over the entire mountain valley.
"Bi-… bang… puff … ka cha…" Pa.s.sing over soil and vegetation, the innate vitalities created many strange sounds. But Luo Fan continued practicing that secret art unaware.
Inside of his body, the innate vitalities were being absorbed by that mysterious energy. But the nature of the innate vitality was too awful so it wasn"t increasing by much!
Then, Luo Fan felt a sudden emptiness. It was if he had power but was incapable of using it.
The innate vitalities flooding into him weren"t enough!
"Insufficient." This thought was getting sharper and clearer in his mind. "These are not enough by far!"
In response, the surrounding vortex grew even further. At first, it was only within the range of the mountain valley. Then it started expanding from three miles… to ten miles… to a hundred miles… and then to a thousand miles…
By the end, the sphere of influence had expanded to a radius of three thousand miles. As more and more innate vitalities swarmed Luo Fan, they appeared to condense into a liquid.
In this new form, they streamed into the various acupoints of Luo Fan"s stature. In an endless rhythm, they scattered and blended feeding that profound energy cycle inside him.
But the feeling of emptiness was still growing stronger and more noticeable!
It was becoming unbearable!
After half a day, he had absorbed the innate vitalities within a thousand miles. But, the profound energy remained in a similar state as before, smaller than a single strand of hair…
This efficiency was horrible.
"It looks as if without chaos vitality this cultivation method is useless…" Helpless, Luo Fan returned the mysterious energy to his Mud Pill Palace (泥丸宫) . As he did so, the surrounding vortex began to wane.
"Bang…"
Suddenly, the volume of the condensed innate vitalities expanded by a thousand times. After reaching a critical point, it exploded.
The resulting shock waves blew any vitality, sand, and debris away from Luo Fan"s body.
Eventually, impact waves calmed. But, the mountain valley appeared as if atomic bombs had destroyed it. Pits were everywhere… and slash marks riddled the ground.
"It appears as if I need to find a new place to practice. Somewhere with chaos vitality otherwise my speed of cultivation will halt."
With this in mind, Luo Fan"s eyes swept the Great Antiquity until they met Mount Buzhou.
He didn"t need to consider where he should go because what destination was better than it?
Decision made, several mysterious fluctuations started to ripple underneath him.
Then, under his feet, four auspicious clouds emerged, lifting his body off the ground.
This was the Pixiu"s own talent.
The innate G.o.ds, born of heaven and earth, possessed many kinds of abilities each unique from G.o.d to G.o.d. But every innate G.o.d had the ability to fly.
Luo Fan smiled as he soared above the heavens. No sense of strangeness or panic existed; only comfort.
Comfortable and satisfied, he couldn"t help but let out a thunderous roar.
Acting without restraint, he ran upward. With each step, auspicious clouds appeared and vanished in endless cycles.
He kept flying in this way, running on the void as if he were on the earth. His stance was free and elegant, unaffected by the harsh environment.
The more he ran, the more relaxed he became. He moved faster and faster. Until finally, each step became 100 miles, and in an instant, he was ten thousand miles above the ground.
Compared to the sky of Earth, the Great Antiquity"s sky was more immense. He was ten thousand miles up and he merely touched the lowest layer of clouds. Even from there, the heavens above still appeared deep and inestimable.
Half of a day pa.s.sed before Luo Fan stopped running. The joy of the first flight had worn off, and Luo Fan needed to reorient himself.
Ten thousand miles in the sky, Mount Buzhou wasn"t hard to spot. But Luo Fan could only see the body of the mountain as its peak still hid among the highest layers of the heavens.
Reoriented, he continued rushing to Mount Buzhou.
His figure appeared to turn into ash grey lightning as he flashed through the air. Every place he pa.s.sed, a scarring light white mark was left behind.
Between heaven and earth, chaos vitality precedes innate.
As chaos vitality possesses attributes of chaos, it never stops emitting the breath of chaos. The stronger the source, the stronger the breath.
Wherever chaos vitality exists, it is detectable. It doesn"t matter if far above the sky or ten thousand miles away. So, Luo Fan didn"t have to worry about not being able to find it.
Moving at an unsurpa.s.sable speed, Luo observed the vastness of the Great Antiquity.
And when three years had pa.s.sed by, Luo Fan finally stopped.
He had discovered a place with a source of chaos vitality. But by the time he had detected it, he had traveled over 10 million miles.
Over the course of those three years, Mount Buzhou never seemed to change. Even as he moved closer and closer, it was invariable; getting neither bigger nor smaller.
Luo Fan had also lost that feeling of wonder he got from soaring above the clouds. Flying now felt as normal as walking on Earth. So, it was no surprise why the chaos breath shooting into the sky thrilled him so.
"Finally!" Luo Fan smiled. He was no longer unhappy because of the fruitless years of continuous travel.
He sensed that the chaos breath several miles away was even bigger than the one that had been inside the burrow!
It was radiating countless chaos vitalities!
~Translator Suyi